


whisper-smoke man

by celestialbisexual



Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Implied/Referenced Murder, M/M, kind of, non-graphic gun injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 16:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17389988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialbisexual/pseuds/celestialbisexual
Summary: Minutes pass, and the tape recorder spins on and on and on.





	whisper-smoke man

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I've completely given up on capitalizing my titles. Oh well. This is honestly just most of my vague, half-formed static man headcanons shoved into a fic, which means that one day most of this will probably be jossed to hell and back, but hey. 
> 
> I just think he's so interesting, because he's so obviously and inherently selfish, but at the same time he so quickly becomes ride or die for Nick and Chris, which i think says a lot about the way that people have been treating him since he became Static Man. Also how cool he is with murder, which I personally think goes back to the inherent selfishness thing, but is def something I'll probably explore later. And also is bad. Don't kill people.
> 
> Title is actually a misheard lyric from Soft, Fuzzy Man by Lemon Demon, which is arguably the definitive Static Man song

Static Man eyes the tape recorder warily. He’s got maybe ten more minutes before the tape runs out and he disappears again. In bed beside him, Nicholas snores softly.

 

The thing is, Nicholas doesn’t sleep very well. The thing is that he had been up for almost three days before this. The thing is that if Static Man wakes him now, he probably won’t go back to sleep. The thing is, also, that Static Man hasn’t spent this much time existing in years. The thing is that he’s kind of gotten used to existing since Nicholas came along, and it makes the pauses so much worse.

 

The thing is that it used to be he wouldn’t have even had to think about it.

 

Minutes pass, and the tape recorder spins on and on and on.

* * *

He was a musician, before, in the same way every self-obsessed twenty-something is a musician. He had a drumset in his basement and an acoustic guitar he took to parties and a songbook bursting with verses about how no one understood him. He _loved_ music, in a way he secretly believed no one had before.

 

Unfortunately for him, he was actually pretty good.

 

Good enough that when he ducked into a little shop in Paris during his semester abroad, he was drawn immediately to the wall of strange instruments. Good enough that he didn’t hesitate when one of the weird sisters offered to let him play one. Good enough that he was able to play it almost immediately.

 

And _oh,_ the music it made. He knew in that moment he would do anything to hear it again.

 

And well. He did

* * *

 

From music came magic. The fun kind at first, the kind that got him laid and got his shitty band playing nicer gigs. Cheap flashy rituals that didn’t need much more than a few neat rocks or some, well, _bodily fluids_.

 

He’s still not sure exactly when he stopped doing parlor tricks and started getting into real shit, because the thing is it never stopped being _fun._ Even now, with blood and static and the tang of ozone in the air, he has to admit he’s having a great fucking time.

 

He explodes a few more shitheads, mugs a bit for the camera, and manifests back at Nicholas’s place in time for dinner. It’s basically the fucking American Dream.

 

He wonders why he even wants his body back, if it means giving any of this up.

 

And then he remembers. Or rather, he is reminded.

 

It happens like this. Turns out the shitheads he killed had friends. Pissed off friends who managed to figure out where he and Nicholas are living. They don’t go for any kind of magical warfare, no complicated rituals or subtle reordering of the universe, just a bunch of motherfuckers with guns. They kick the door down, shouting the house down and Nicholas is shouting back because he’s fucking ridiculous and Static Man can taste violence in the air, is ready to explode on these motherfuckers, and then-

 

And then one of the motherfuckers shoots the tape recorder. And he isn’t anything anymore. He’s back in the fucking void, useless and trapped with no idea what’s happening to Nicholas.

 

He wants to throw something, but of course there’s nothing to throw. There’s nothing, period.

 

He loses track of time, like he used to before, tries to remember how the drum solo on his band’s first album went, counts backwards from fifty thousand, does not think about Nicholas shot and dead on the floor, tries to remember the name of his first-grade teacher.

 

And then, in a rush and a crackle, he’s back. Only, he’s not in his apartment, or Nicholas’s dad’s house, or even some shitty motel. He’s in the middle of the fucking woods, and some absolute fuckwad ritualists are goggling at him like they’ve never seen a semi-corporeal extra-dimensional entity made of static and teeth before. They don’t even want anything, apparently hadn’t thought that far ahead. They dismiss him before he can finish asking if they’ve met Nicholas, which is rude as hell.  

 

And then. It happens. Again.

 

Some bargain-bin illuminati wanted him to fuck up some equally bargain-bin stone masons. A pretentious fucking occultist who needed his “mortal enemy dispatched”, a girl who wanted her stalker ex to back off, and actually he didn’t mind doing that one, dude was a fucking creep. Nobody even knew Nicholas’s name, and it had been at least a week in real-world time.

 

By the fifth time he gets summoned he’s starting to panic because well, not that many people actually know Nicholas, and even less know about him and Static Man, and he could be dead and buried and nobody would ever even bother to tell him and he has no living family except for Chris and she’s a fucking pirate in a surreal hellscape so she can’t do anything and-

 

“I apologize for the delay. I was- it’s been kind of a shitty week.”

 

Nicholas is sitting across the room, looking worn but undeniably alive.

 

Static Man is across the room in a blink, literally, reaching out with his best approximation of hands, wanting his hands on Nicholas, wanting to find whatever bright spark keeps him alive and cradle it close. Nicholas flinches back.

 

“Please don’t grab me. I’m still kind of- sore.” He says, and Static Man notices the line of stitches on the side on his left arm, the outline of more bandages through his shirt. “I apologize.”

 

“Don’t- don’t apologize for being hurt, dude. I’m sorry I- Where were- How- What the fuck happened _?”_

 

“I got shot.” Nicholas said.

 

“You fucking what?”

 

“Well. When they shot out the tape recorder the bullet ricocheted and then I got hit in the side and …” Nicholas gestures at his arm. “I’m fine. It didn’t hit anything important, and I was actually able to go to the hospital this time, which was a nice change.”

 

Static Man growls.

 

“I’m gonna kill them.”

 

“There’s no need for that.”

 

“No, seriously, I’m gonna wreck their fucking shop, Nicholas, they don’t get to hurt _my-_.”

 

“ _There’s no need for that-_ ” Nicholas repeats, “because they’re dead. Do you remember that ritual where we had to burn all the frogs’ hearts? I had the ashes from that on hand, and-”

 

He spreads his hands, as if to indicate the lack of motherfuckers with guns. Which made sense because, if Static Man remembered that particular ritual correctly, there probably wasn’t enough left of the motherfuckers to fit in a thimble. “Anyway I don’t think we should have any more trouble from their organization. I bargained a few of the lesser tapes for a promise of non-interference”

 

“That’s fucking vicious, babe.” Static Man tells him. He reaches out slow enough to give Nicholas a chance to pull back, and cups his cheek, moving into Nicholas’s space.

 

“Oh. Is that going to be a problem?” Nicholas is smiling now, soft and fond and teasing.

 

“No. Actually…” He lets his not-hand run down Nicholas’s body like water, popping the buttons on his shirt. “It’s kinda hot.”

 

Nicholas laughs, a little breathlessly. “You’re insatiable. I’m _injured_.”

 

He makes no move to pull away though, so Static Man folds in half to kneel before him. “I’ll be gentle then.”

 

“You will do no such thing..” Nicholas orders, and leans down to meet Static Man’s should’ve-been-a-mouth.

* * *

He’s not stupid. He knows that it’s possible Nicholas doesn’t actually give a shit about him, and this is all just a ploy to keep Static Man’s power in his pocket. _You can be friends with somebody you want to use_ , after all. It’s just that-

 

The hardest thing to adjust to about being- what he is, wasn’t the power, wasn’t the way his body got up and left, leaving him a collection of electrical impulses and fragments of song, it wasn’t even the lack of existence that made up most of his time. It was the way that, for everybody else, he completely ceased to be a person.

 

There was this woman, a few months after he’d- become, or un-become, or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it. After it all went down.  He’d known her before, not well, but well enough. They’d gotten drinks a couple times, swapped stories about the weirdest ritual components they’d ever gotten, hooked up in the bathroom of some shitty bar. It’d been fun, to hang out with somebody who really _got_ what it was that he was doing.

 

So when she summoned him, he recognized her immediately. And he thought that maybe, just maybe, she was his salvation. He told her everything and goddamn _begged_ for her help, tears that crackled stinging what weren’t his eyes.

 

And the kicker was that in the moments between when he stopped talking and when she turned the recorder off, he looked at her face. And he saw that she believed him.

 

So maybe Nicholas doesn’t really care. But he buys Static Man’s favorite shitty beer and watches children’s cartoons with him and tells him obscure stories from French history and finds the longest cassette tapes he can and he lets Static Man wrap his stinging not-arms around him and hold on.

 

He and Chris were the first people in so goddamn long to treat him like a person, and that is, that _has to be_ enough.

* * *

“Hey babe… Nick. Nicholas. Dude. Wake up the tape recorders about to-”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Comment what you think Static Man's band was called. I think it was some combination of the + animal/object + something edgy


End file.
